Does This Taste Funny? A Half-Baked Look at Food and Foodies (4 page)

The
meal we’re going to analyze here is a simple meat/sauce/pasta concoction, but
there was one hurdle to overcome when I made this.

As
a Jew, I’ve never kept strictly kosher, but at the time I made this dish, I wasn’t
eating or cooking swine.

The
thing is, we won a free pound of pork sausage in a contest at our grocery
store, and money was tight that month. So, after minutes of deep spiritual
questioning, I decided God wanted me to cook it.

Note:
since the night I made this dish, I’ve relaxed my position on pork. Mostly because
I remembered how much I love bacon.

About the following
recipe: be sure to follow the measurements and steps precisely or . . . well, I
have no idea what might happen, but I’m not going to be responsible for it.

Capellini C
on Carne Gratuito

E
Sugo
Insolito

(Long Skinny Noodles with Free Meat and Unusual Sauce)

prep time: 10
minutes

cooking time: from
30 minutes to an hour

servings: 6 or so

Ingredients

1 box
of
angel hair pasta
(‘capellini’)

1 handful
of
sliced
mushrooms

1 piec
e
of
onion

1 stalk
of
celery

1
carrot

A few shakes
of
rosemary

The last of a small
container
of
sage

1 shake of
parsley

More than I intended
of
cumin

Some
dill

1 can of
organic tomato
sauce

1 can
of
green beans

Plenty of
extra virgin olive
oil

A few splashes
of Tabasco™ sauce

A little
kosher salt

1 lb.
of  ground pork
sausage

zero cloves of
fresh garlic

What
I Was
Thinking

I open my cupboards for
inspiration.
Capellini
(
which I believe is
Italian
for ‘a dollar a box’) is enough like spaghetti that I figure
I’ll just make my own red sauce.

I can
cook
the sausage in a skillet
, a
nd
I’ll
just
use
some
kosher
salt to offset the whole pork thing.

Now, the onion is looking a
little tired, and the mushrooms look they might turn in a couple days, so I
have
to
use those.

And the carrot is in
because, even though I’ve never seen either of us grab a carrot for a snack,
for some reason we buy carrots every week, and I’m tired of throwing out
carrots.

I know it’s borderline
heretical
to make a pasta dish withou
t garlic, but I was out of garlic.
Since
i
t
was too hot to walk to the store, I said to myself “Screw it, I’ve got other
spices,” and
,
“Who needs garlic anyway
?”

For the sausage, I grabbed
parsley, sage, and rosemary, and for the next ten minutes, I had th
e song “Scarborough Fair” stuck in my head.
(
Good
thing I didn’t have any thyme, or I might have actually
conjured
up
Simon and Garfunkel
right
there
in my kitchen.
)

I also grabbed some dill,
because it was next to the rosemary
,
and
I used cumin, because my baby
loves her some cumin. Which
would be a great
name
for
a
blues song.

The tomato sauce I used was
organic, because The Girlfriend always buys organic, even though I’m pretty
sure most of the pesticides are gone by the time the
tomatoes
are turned into sauce, pressure-sealed and then sautéed.

Oh, and I could have used
whole mushrooms, but then
I would have needed
to
slice them.

Instructions

In a big pot, bring a bunch of
water to a boil. Add some salt at some point in there. When the water is at a
rolling boil, realize you should have prepared the vegetables. Turn off burner.

Place carrot, mushrooms, and onion
into the weird little blender thing you got for your birthday. Use ‘pulse’
setting, as that’s still the only button it has. Set aside ‘pulsed’ veggies.

Now scoop veggies back into blender
and add celery that you forgot to put in with carrot, mushrooms and onion. Set
aside veggies again.

Bring water to boil. Again. Add
pasta to water. To duplicate my results exactly, it’s very important to
forget
how quickly angel
hair pasta cooks.

In a bowl, mix the sausage with the
spices, including the sage, because ‘adding sage’ sounds like something chefs
do. 

Pour olive oil into a big
skillet; sprinkle salt and shake the Tabasco bottle at the skillet like
you’re that guy in church who spreads the incense.

Heat skillet for a bit, then add
sausage mix to skillet in small chunks.

Use plastic spatula to break up
meat, then take partially-melted spatula out and use wooden spoon.

Start to add sauce until you remember
that if your meat is smothered in a red sauce you won’t be able to judge the
color of the meat to know if it’s cooked long enough.

Test the temperature of the meat,
and then realize that since it’s ground up into little pieces, you can’t really
use your thermometer. Now you can try to guess when it’s ‘done enough’!

Turn heat down on skillet,
then
finally remember your angel hair pasta.

 Use the big pasta spoon to stir
the overcooked noodles, and notice how a chunk of them have congealed into one
giant noodly mass. Separate this chunk.

When handle breaks off of pasta
spoon, stop stirring. Melodramatically announce that you’ve ‘ruined dinner.’
Drain pasta and set aside.

Turn heat up on skillet ‘just to
make sure,’ and add veggie mix. Stir.

Add tomato sauce and stir again.
Turn heat down on skillet and cover, while you figure out what to do next.

Empty green beans into microwave
safe dish and cook for a minute or so.

Drain beans, then cut beans into
smaller sizes. Put beans in skillet and stir.

Pour contents of skillet over
noodles. Remind yourself to get garlic. And more pork.

Thanks to Google and a
VERY tolerant girlfriend (both of whom I love), I’ve been able to experiment a
lot in the kitchen, and by ‘experiment,’ I mean ‘throw things against the wall
to see what sticks (sometimes literally).

Along the way, I’ve
learned a lot. For one thing, there
is
such a thing as
too
much cumin. I’ve also learned that having the right tools is essential. And
since I discovered the Food Network, I frequently point  at the screen and say,
“I need one of those.”

To be fair, most of the
time I don’t in fact NEED a device that shaves parsnips, or a tool designed
specifically for cutting the ends off pineapples, but you get the idea.

I may not be wired like
the stereotypical male in many ways, but I love gadgets as much as any of my
fellow penis-bearers (
try that phrase, Auto-correct:
“Did you mean
‘pal
l
bearers
?’).

Some kitchen gadgets
are ridiculous. For example, you can buy an 'egg cuber,' which hard-boils eggs
in the shape of . . . cubes. How much disposable income do you have to have
before you think, “If only my hard-boiled eggs weren’t always so . . . egg-shaped!”

But
until a very special birthday gift arrived last year, I never had the one item
I needed to go from ‘newbie’ to ‘foodie.’ I didn’t own a cast-iron skillet. Now
I do, and nothing will ever be the same.

I’m sure experienced cooks are hip
to the advantages of going with cast-iron, but let’s review . . . Cast-iron
skillets distribute heat evenly, they last forever, and since you don’t really
wash them, they develop a layer of seasoning on them over time.

Another
advantage to an old-school skillet is that it’s the only object in the kitchen
that can be effectively used to whack an intruder in the head during a home
invasion.

Face it, if a burglar
breaks in, you’re not gonna be able to take him out with your microplane, or
your breadmaker. Of course, that’s assuming the burglar breaks in through the
kitchen, while I happen to be cooking, but if that happens, I’ll be ready.